


The Statue

by Mickey_D



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Romance, Small Towns, Soulmates, Transfiguration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 14:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20725889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mickey_D/pseuds/Mickey_D
Summary: The waiting seems never ending. I'm down to poorly concealed pity and platitudes that lost their meaning a long time ago. There's only two people who get what I'm going through. My uncle and the statue in the middle of the park.





	The Statue

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys enjoy this! It's the first original thing I've written in a while. Let me know what you think!

Everyone has a soulmate.

At least, that’s what we’ve all been told. According to movies and books and TV shows, the mystical blue Universe puts two souls in shining gold bubbles and tosses them down to Earth knowing for sure they’ll find each other no matter what.

That’s how my favorite show starts anyway.

Personally, I don’t see the Universe as a mystical blue being. I see Her—and it’s always a Her—as a harried woman in a slightly cluttered apartment pouring over stacks and stacks of papers pertaining to soulmates and who goes where and when. She gets to sit down at the end of Her days with a glass of red wine and some dark chocolate and thinks, “It got a little frantic there in the middle, and I certainly didn’t expect  _ that _ to happen, but it all worked out.”

On record, the longest anyone has ever had to wait for their soulmate was 45 years, 2 months, and 8 days. It was my great-great uncle. He was a POW while she was learning advanced algebra. They met at a dinner a mutual friend hosted to celebrate her getting her nursing license.

My whole family tends to wait a while before meeting their soulmates. And at the rate I’m going, I’m going to beat my great-great uncle’s record no problem. We’ll probably meet in a nursing home two days before one of us croaks.

You can’t find your soulmate until you’re eighteen. At least, officially you can’t. Plenty of childhood friends swear up and down they’re soulmates. Some of them are right. Some of them aren’t. I turned eighteen fourteen years ago. And I’ve done the mingling and the organized groups and the online dating scene. Some people I’ve met have been great. Some haven’t been. I’ve tried to get an exact answer to the question of how you know exactly. Maybe I’ve met them and both of us just didn’t know how to know. All I’ve ever gotten in reply is a shrug and then, “You just know.”

It’s a very helpful response.

Consulting the scientific literature gets you a slightly more useful response. There’s quite a bit of jargon-- _ You just know _ is at times much easier to understand--but from what I can put together, soulmates evolved to ensure peak survival of the species. Soulmates have compatible immunity, genetics, etc. Between ages eighteen and nineteen, your Soulmate Finding System (not scientifically accurate) matures. Your nose can subconsciously pick up the pheromones around you and a thin layer of hormones takes up residence in your skin. The pheromones and the Universe draw you to your soulmate, and when you touch, you just know. Some studies say it feels like electricity and fireworks and sparks. Other studies say it’s calming and grounding and peaceful. 

My doctor says that my Soulmate Finding System is good to go, all my hormone levels are normal. I just have to wait. 

I know my lack of soulmate is town gossip. When I first arrived, a fresh face in a town content with who it is, I was paraded around to every available person. I ended up with a lot of friends who found their soulmates. Now, it seems that the only person who truly understands my plight and doesn’t offer her pity or her platitudes is the statue.

There’s a statue in the middle of the park. It’s a girl in a dress that’s being blown around by the wind. She’s got her hand reaching for something, stooping a bit to reach. Stories say she’s waiting for her soulmate, like me, and, when her soulmate touches her hand, she’ll come to life once more. Mrs. Nelson, my next door neighbor, tells the story the best. 

I imagine the Universe was in the shower, reviewing Her work one day, only to see this girl’s soul wandering around. She nearly breaks Her neck when She slips on soap suds and panic. A wet scramble through papers and jars of golden bubbles revealed that poor soul had gone down too early, literally slipped through the cracks. There’d never been a soul without a mate and that wasn’t going to be changing now. So, she waits.

It’s quite the tourist attraction, our statue, which doesn’t quite sit well with me. The story might not be true, but if it is, would you want all those people touching you without your okay and without any manners? And don’t get me started on the pictures. So many exaggerated sad faces when the statue stays a statue. She’s reduced to a fun little story told for laughs and fake condolences. A little check off a bucket list.

Us locals keep her space nice. One of my neighbors, Mrs. Munoz, who retired from teaching English at the community college, keeps the flowerbed fresh all year. Neighborhood boys keep the grass mowed and the leaves raked. She gets candy at Halloween and cookies during the holidays. A raincoat if we get there in time, and a hat and scarf in the winter. We wipe off bird poop and relocate birds’ nests. Most of us don’t really believe the legend, but we keep up the appearance for the tourists.

I’ll never forget the first day I touched the statue.

I spotted yet another group of tourists while I was walking my dog in the park. I kept my eyes on them, making sure nothing untoward happened. We’ve had those sorts of problem before. They take their selfies, laugh as they filter the shots for the perfect post, and pile back into their car, music so loud I can hear it.

It’s pretty much just me and my dog after that. Mr. Tony, an old man who plays chess outside the bookshop every Wednesday, fed the ducks, but his back was to me and he was far away. No one here to witness my own ridiculousness. I walked up to the statue and just looked at her for a moment.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m back.”

I don’t let on to a lot of people that I talk to our statue. I have ever since I first heard Mrs. Nelson tell the legend to someone at the diner. She feels like my only kindred soul in this town. Despite our best efforts, we’re both just waiting. 

“George found her soulmate,” I told her. There’s only a little bitterness in my voice. “I’m happy for her. I am. I just… wanted it to be me for once.”

I eyed her outstretched hand, the bronze worn to a shiny gold from years and years of touches.

The urge to add my touch pushed me closer to her than I had ever stepped. I glanced down to be sure I wasn’t crushing any flowers and then looked up at her. Our eyes met. Another furtive glance reassured me I was alone. Then, slowly and with plenty of fond, internal head shaking usually reserved for tourists, I closed my hand around that sun-warmed metal.

My dog yipped as he was jerked back when I stumbled trying to accommodate the sudden change in weight I was supporting. I must have been so caught up in my little chat with the statue I didn’t hear an out of control scooter or skateboard or whatever this person was riding before they ran into me. Thick dark curls got in my mouth and eyes. I pulled the hair out of my mouth and shook my head to see clearly. I steadied the body in my arms and made sure our feet were flat before I put some space between us.

“You should really warn a person before you crash into them,” I said as I brushed the dirt off of me, dirt I wasn’t quite sure how I’d managed to get on me.

“I apologize. I didn’t mean to.”

I froze as I heard the voice. My eyes locked with Mr. Tony’s. He was grinning broadly. Apparently, the ruckus we caused was highly amusing.

Slowly, I turned back to the statue.

The pedestal was empty.

The young lady who’d fallen into me was brushing off bronze dust from her dress. It was my favorite color. She pushed her thick hair out of her face and looked at me. “Hi,” she breathed.

Like a clap of thunder, or a light bulb turning on, or that guy jumping out of the tub shouting, “Eureka!”, I just knew.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear it!


End file.
